Snarkiness Made Real

Holy crap hold onto your hats friends.  See the little boy in the middle?  He is the living, Peruvian incarnation of the kid on the cooler sans ice cream cone (see post below).  Just look at the size of his hat and how unhappy he is! 

And I thought I was just taking a photo of cute kids in traditional outfits.  The world works in mysterious ways.

It's A Bad Sign

Signage in Peru is a travesty.  Misrepresentations making little grammatical or logical sense, signs mystify rather than describe the service or product offered.  Graphic designers could make a killing down here.  This has been the case all along, but I’ve just recently started to document the best of the worst.  Hopefully there will be further installments before I leave.  Let’s get started. 

Look at this child.  

This sign is from a bus company and talks about kids taking their identification card with them when they travel to combat kidnapping.  Who in their right mind would kidnap this kid?  He looks like he’s going to kill me in my sleep.  And even look at his ID photo.  If that soulless stare doesn’t make your amygdala squirm, nothing will.  It’s like Hitler’s baby photo.

This lady doesn’t work here.  Also, it’s 40 degrees out.  Sorry you got your hopes up. 

A Peruvian favorite is to put useless quotation marks around things, especially names.  A favorite of mine in Carhuamayo is Botica “Jhire.”  In Spanish, j’s make an h sound, and h’s are silent.  I know, hold onto your hat.  I think they put the quotation marks around it so you have to take a pause to appreciate the pronunciation.  This one has me stumped, though.

The marks aren’t around a proper noun.  Is it not really a bathroom?  Is this some sort of South American hipster irony?  Good god, I just want to know if I can pee in there or not! 

Then, there’s this little man on the side of an ice cream cooler.  

Why is he so inexplicably upset about his awesome cowboy outfit, physics defying hat, and giant chocolate ice cream cone?  Furthermore, why on earth would you put such an unhappy child on your cooler?  My hypothesis is that the hat and ice cream were photoshopped in.  It’s actually just a small boy in part of a cowboy outfit, maybe being told his cat died. 

Lastly, some totally bewildering graffiti.  

Rather than just lacking mastery of the English language, I like to think that this graffiti artist has a tyrannosaurus friend named Chomp, of whom he has a high opinion.  

This Week Was A Good Week

Let it be known that the week of April 8^th-14^th 2013, was a good one. 

Monday:  I finally bought the vermiculture worms I’ve been hunting for.  Weeks of phone calls, visits to municipalities, hassling, and light begging finally came to fruition.  I happily walked to my house with a plastic bag full of worms. 

Tuesday:  Every Tuesday, I have geography class with the 6^th graders of Micaela Bastidas elementary.  The endgame is to finish the World Map, but it’s been raining for every class and we weren’t able to get outside.  Finally, this beautiful Tuesday, it didn’t rain and we drew South America and most of Oceania and eastern Asia. 

If that wasn’t enough, I got to talk to an American friend I had been playing weeks of phone tag with just before he left the country.

Then, there was this sunset. 

Wednesday:  I cruised around Carhuamayo, buying and delivering materials to make the worm beds.  I got to chat up the brick lady and ride around in the back of a motocart.  Everything was in position.

Then, this puppy wanted to be my friend and let me rub her belly.

Thursday: We installed worm beds in two elementary schools.  The kids did most of the work.

They had a better time than it looked like.  Props to Jhan on the end.

Girls like worms!

The kids at Primaria Caceres were much better smilers.  Here, you say "whiskey" instead of "cheese."  I'd take either at this point.  

 

Handfull of worms, surrounded by kiddos, not bad.  

A little child labor never hurt anybody, right?

The finished product!

Friday-Sunday: Regional meeting in the jungle with all my friends!  Cremoladas, blue morpho butterflies, and we used the regional grill for the first time.  

Here's the view from our hotel room.

We went to a wildlife preserve and saw these disco-ball chrysalises.  

And even had some hammock time!

Presenting, the grill.

We might not have chairs, but we do have steak, chicken, veggies, cocktails full of jungle herbs, and plantain and pineapple kebabs.  We love you, grill.